Azernews.Az

The capacity of the South Caucasus Pipeline, a section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) pipeline crossing Azerbaijan and Georgia, could be increased to 60 billion cubic meters a year, if necessary, an official of Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR told Trend news agency.

At present, Azerbaijan is in the process of choosing a route of gas supplies to energy-thirsty European markets. The partners developing Azerbaijan's offshore gas condensate field Shah Deniz are considering two projects for transporting the gas -- Nabucco West and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

Around 6 billion cubic meters of gas will be exported to Turkey and 10 billion cubic meters to Europe during the second stage of Shah Deniz development. Shah Deniz Stage 2 is expected to start in late 2017 or early 2018.

The source said the South Caucasus Pipeline's actual capacity is 8.8 billion cubic meters. "Then it will be expanded by 16 billion cubic meters, and, if necessary, up to 60 billion cubic meters. The pipeline will be expanded more with each additional volume of gas."

The source said that the expansion of the pipeline's capacity will be carried out by means of looping, which involves laying parallel pipes connected with the main pipeline.

The work on expanding the pipeline for the gas to be extracted during the second stage of Shah Deniz development will begin in the summer of 2013.

The contract to develop the Shah Deniz field was signed in June 1996. Shah Deniz participating interests are: BP (operator - 25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), SOCAR (10%), LUKOIL (10%), NICO (10%), Total (10%), and TPAO (9%).